How a migrant worker turned large-scale livestock breeder became a leader in getting rich

"To get where I am today, I must thank the government and my fellow villagers. My achievements today are inseparable from their support and help." Migrant worker Li Jibin told a Workers' Daily reporter with a smile.

Li Jibin, 50 this year, is from Xi Village, Sanhe Town, Ping'an District, Haidong City, Qinghai Province. With only a junior high school education, his 3 years of military service and many years of working away from home not only broadened his horizons, but also let one deeply sense the distinctive drive and resilience of this man...

After being discharged from the military, Li Jibin went to work at the Qinghai Nonferrous Metals Processing Plant. In 1997, after working at the enterprise for 11 years, Li Jibin unfortunately lost his job when the factory went bankrupt, and he returned home with 10,000 yuan in government compensation at the time.

After being laid off, Li Jibin's whole family had a tight economic income, and their living conditions plummeted. At that time, the whole family, old and young, crammed into a dilapidated adobe house and lived there for 13 years.

Whenever he saw his wife running back and forth, toiling hard to keep this poor family going, Li Jibin felt extremely ashamed. Unwilling to remain ordinary, he resolved to leave home and work away from home to make a living.

Many people in Xi Village, where Li Jibin lived, had also made their fortunes by raising pigs. After discussing it with his wife, Li Jibin made up his mind not to keep working away from home and wanted to start a business raising pigs for a living. In 2001, Li Jibin borrowed money from all the relatives and friends around him and took out a bank loan of 110,000 yuan. For Li Jibin and his wife, who had never had any pig-raising experience before, it was like crossing a river by feeling the stones.

"At that time, the pigs were all introduced from Ledu County, and the feed for the pigs was all finished feed bought from outside. At that time, the two of us knew nothing at all, and we had never had any professional training either. All our pig-raising knowledge came from figuring things out ourselves or running to ask our fellow villagers. Sometimes, when we really did not know what to do, we looked for answers in books or online." said Li Jibin's wife, Zhao Guihua.

Just like that, step by step, Li Jibin and his wife explored the path of pig raising for three years, and their pig-raising business gradually began to improve, and their efforts soon paid off. Three years later, Li Jibin decided to expand the farm again. Over the more than five years that followed, Li Jibin and Zhao Guihua became more and more adept, and the pig sheds built earlier were "full" again.

Today, migrant worker Li Jibin has become a leader in getting rich in his village. Many pig farmers from inside and outside the village run to his farm to learn pig-raising experience. Quite a few farmers who came after hearing of his reputation visited his pig sheds on site and took the initiative to exchange ideas and learn from him. In this way, Li Jibin also found a lot of common language with the farmers, and more and more farmers in the surrounding villages began to raise pigs.

"Now it cannot really be called success or not, but I know that in life and in work one must be down-to-earth and work hard; only then can there be rewards. My greatest wish is that our village can also be designated by the city as a pig-raising demonstration village in the future!" Li Jibin is full of longing for his future.